Hit So Hard: The Life and Near Death Story of Patty Schemel

When Nirvana burst onto the national scene in 1991, the music they played spoke directly to a generation that had emerged from the Reagan-Bush years angry and disenfranchised. As grunge took off, the music industry was completely transformed in a way nobody expected… especially the young musicians who went from tiny shared Seattle apartments to international superstardom, sometimes overnight. Some handled it well… and some did not.

Just three years later, the drug-related deaths of several prominent musicians, capped by the suicide of Kurt
Cobain, closed the books on an all-too-brief era. As the acclaimed drummer of Courtney Love’s seminal rock band Hole, Patty Schemel was right in the middle of all of it. The openly gay woman who always felt “different” never dreamed she would be part of a multi-platinum selling band, touring with legends, or on the cover of Rolling Stone. Or that, thanks to drug addiction, she could lose it all. HIT SO HARD tells the story of Patty’s rise to fame (and nearly fatal fall from it), with no punches pulled… and it’s one hell of a story.

Told with insider interviews and stunningly intimate, never-before-seen footage shot by Patty and her friends (Patty was given a Hi-8 camera just before Hole’s infamous Live Through This world tour), HIT SO HARD is not only an all-access backstage pass to the music that shaped a generation, but a harrowing tale of overnight success, the cost of addiction, and, ultimately, recovery and redemption.